Che and Felix

Che's back in the news - well, entertainment news - thanks to the release of the adaptation of The Motorcycle Diaries. Without having seen it, I can say with confidence it won't touch The Bolivian Diary: a ten-year old documentary, often narrated with Che's own words, of the ill-fated guerilla campaign which led to his capture and execution in 1967.

Do you recognize the man to Che's right, wearing the Bolivian uniform, who's soon to participate in his murder?



That's a Bolivian uniform, but he's not Bolivian. He's Cuban-American. He's CIA. He's Felix Rodriguez, aka "Max Gomez" from the glory days of Iran/Contra's drugs and guns toot. Felix has been a trusted asset of the Bush family ever since he hooked up with Poppy in the early '60s to recruit anti-Castro Cubans. And from the Bay of Pigs to Vietnam to El Salvador and beyond his name, like Bush's, is written in blood, but to much of the press it may as well be invisible ink.

He took Che's wristwatch as a trophy of the kill.

Rodriguez is also a Bush elector for the state of Florida. On September 12 in Washington, he spoke at a rally of "Vietnam Veterans for Truth," saying "I never saw any atrocities that Senator Kerry claims we did in Vietnam. We helped the Vietnamese people."



From Webster Tarpley's interview with Celerino Castillo, former DEA special agent and author of the whistleblowing Powderburns:

TARPLEY: Now, you've mentioned Felix Rodriguez, Max Gomez... Certainly, Felix Rodriguez has been with George Bush for a very, very long time, and what you can see in that book is, he's got a signed photograph from George Bush telling him what a great patriot he is. Would you agree with that judgement on Felix Rodriguez/Max Gomez?

CASTILLO: No, sir. If you go back to the Vietnam War, we have intelligence where the CIA and those individuals were heavily involved in trafficking heroin into the U.S. in bodybags and so forth.

So, Felix Rodriguez was documented, in our DEA files, as a trafficker. He was a retired CIA agent, and they brought all these people who were heavily involved. If you go back, most of these Bay of Pigs operatives were all documented traffickers, who all served time for narcotics trafficking, for gun-running. They were all criminals; yet, they were being hired by the Oliver North Contra operation to run the illegal narcotics trafficking out of Ilopango.

Castillo's words were even harsher in this recent Miami New Times profile of Rodriguez: "He's always been a terrorist, just like Osama bin Laden and all the terrorists we've made in the past." He adds that in 1986 he met then-Vice President Bush at an ambassador's party in Guatemala, and "told him there was something funny going on.... And he just smiled and walked away."

Rodriguez still feigns ignorance about a drug component to the Contra war of the '80s, nevermind the National Security State's more persistent drug problem. ( In 1984 Rodriguez's business partner, international arms dealer Gerald Latchinian, was arrested smuggling $10 million in cocaine to finance a plot to assassinate Honduran President Roberto Suazo Cordova. His defense argued it was part of a CIA operation.) Rodriguez agrees with Dick Cheney, who as a congressman played a leading role in perpetuating the cover-up, that for pursuing such allegations Senator John Kerry was a "conspiracy theorist."

Anyone whom Dick Cheney calls a conspiracy theorist can't be all bad. But America has yet to raise up a leader it hasn't gunned down who could approach the stature of Che.